One of the weird aspects of money is that it can make things feel cheap. And I mean cheap in a very specific way.

Take Pokéballs. Everyone knows the deal with Pokéballs. Sometimes they work and you get to capture a wild Pokémon. Sometimes they don't work and the wild Pokémon gets to flee. In a traditional Pokémon game, I am A-okay with this transaction. I may rant when a dice roll unexpectedly doesn't go my way, but I rant safely within the fiction of the game: I am a trainer, and that particular Pokémon has gone forever. Hope it wasn't a Psyduck.

Renegade Kid's sci-fi metroidvania Xeodrifter is coming to PS4 and Vita this April via a new publishing deal with Gambitious Digital Entertainment.

Released on 3DS and PC in December, Xeodrifter merges the minimalist 2D platforming of Renegade Kid's earlier Mutant Mudds with the more ambitious open-world exploration of Metroid.

To further celebrate Xeodrifter's branching out, Gambitious just released the game's Special Edition on Steam. This adds an in-depth development diary and soundtrack by chiptune artists Roth Sothy, Matthew Gambrell and Brian Altano.

There's always been an air of implausibility around Xenoblade Chronicles. When it received a PAL release on the Wii in 2011, it was hard to believe such a niche RPG would find its way out of Japan, let alone find itself the subject of one of Nintendo's most expansive, exacting localisations. Playing through Monolith Soft's epic, there was the gentle revelation that from a background of adversity had emerged quite possibly the finest JRPG of a generation, one that picked up the baton fumbled by Square as it waded through the Final Fantasy 13 saga.

There's something equally implausible about seeing it land, for all intents and purposes, intact on a handheld. It's helped that Xenoblade Chronicles 3D arrives in tandem with a new model of Nintendo's 3DS - it won't be playable on older models, which is somewhat understandable given both the undertaking and what's been achieved here - launching to help bang the drum for this year's release of the game's spiritual successor, Xenoblade Chronicles X.

The four years since the launch of the original Xenoblade Chronicles have done little to dim its appeal. Indeed, aside from Persona 4, it's hard to think of an RPG that's launched in the intervening years that carries the same broad appeal, or one that's provided the same tantalising fusion of traditional JRPG traits with more modern, western elements. This remains an essential play, a dizzyingly large open world filled with side quests and a taut, thrilling combat system that's deep and flexible.

Nintendo today launched free-to-play match-3 puzzle game Pokémon Shuffle on the 3DS eShop - but just how intrusive are its in-game purchases?

Each attempt at a game round (think, a go at a Bejeweled level) costs you one heart, whether you win or lose. Pokémon Shuffle starts you off with five hearts.

Every 30 minutes you accrue one extra heart, up to a total of five. If your total is ever above five - for instance, if you have chosen to buy more using gems (obtainable with real-world money) - then the auto-accrue system prevents you from earning more.

Loot is the new level up. A few years ago, people posted about their fourth prestige on Facebook, most probably humming Call of Duty's butt-rock progression jingle as they did so. Come 2015, and my Twitter feed is cut with great swathes of pictures of Destiny's tooled-up future-warriors, owners boasting about their new exotic codpiece, screenshots saturated by more purple than a Prince album cover.

When Borderlands became a hit, haughty nerds like me positively vibrated with surprise that a loot game could capture public imagination. Men and women weaned on Diablo's click 'n' collect appeal suddenly saw the thrill of an unexpected stat buff transformed into the lure of Gearbox's (admittedly shaky) bazillion gun promise.

Bungie's troubled masterpiece is the last link in that chain - the proof is in the pudding, and you can be sure that Activision are dining out on their 16 million-player dessert. It's a game steeped as much in swirling sets of metagame calculations as it is the Halo nostalgia that powers its combat. When an RPG, halfway through, starts making loot the only way to level up, you know something's changed.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate has sold over 3m copies to retailers worldwide, Capcom has announced.

The series has been massively popular in Japan since its inception in 2004, though it's historically failed to spark much interest in the west. It's doing better this time around as Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate placed fourth in UK games sales last week where it saw a 95 per cent increase over its predecessor, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate.

Eurogamer Monster Hunter expert Dan Pearson absolutely loved this latest entry which he called "the series at its approachable best" in his Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate review.

I keep going back to Ironfall Invasion. Not, sadly, because its a compelling and rich game that constantly lures me back, but because it's so bland and characterless that I find simple details bounce off my brain like acorns off a tortoise shell.

It's a third person shooter that's only real selling point is - OMG - it's a third person shooter on the 3DS. You play as a beefy military hero who has absolutely no defining personality traits. His armour is beige. His name, I now know, is apparently Jim? He's fighting against aliens who have taken over the world. They're called Dyxides, and I still can't think of a way to pronounce that without sounding obscene. Then again, the developer is called VD-Dev, so maybe the whole thing is an elaborate allegory for male sexual health.

Last week saw the launch of the New Nintendo 3DS and New 3DS XL, but it was 2K's Evolve that sank its teeth into the top of the UK all-formats chart.

The new franchise stole the top spot with 49 per cent of physical copies sold on Xbox One and 48 per cent sold on PlayStation 4, with the remainder sold on PC (Chart-Track does not include digital sales in its report).

Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D scored a respectable second place.

A school where kids make video games: we used to get the cane for even imagining that when I were a lad. That's why when "the UK's first gaming school" flashes across my inbox, I know I have to get to Liverpool to see it.

A brisk walk down the River Mersey, past the docks, past The Beatles Story, and I'm there. On the surface it's an abandoned old-brick warehouse district. There's a graffitid skate park, a Jamaican hole-in-the-wall caterer. It would make for a great film set. But in the imposing factory of a building over the road lurks The Studio, the school - and it looks as little like a school on the inside as it does on the outside. There's exposed brickwork, pipework and chunky wooden beams. There's a sloping cinema room with big red comfy seats for assemblies and films. There's an arcade machine, free breakfast, even a crypt. Why did my schools have to look like asylums? Even "The Studio" name is cool.

The students file in at 9am and they're a smart lot, all blazers and business attire, all conscientious looking - no trainers instead of shoes, no ties tucked away in hard-man defiance. They're aged between 14 and 19 years old. Today is games day. That's not every day (more on that later), but today they show returning mentors how far they are with their games. And it's impressive stuff.

Nintendo's New 3DS handheld is out in the UK today. Digital Foundry originally reviewed the hardware back in October 2014, but the comments and criticisms remain equally as valid today, so we're republishing the article for those considering an investment in the revised hardware.

Nintendo's attempts to give its portable hardware renewed momentum haven't always been entirely successful; the Game Boy Pocket - twinned with Pokémon - may have rejuvenated the fortunes of its 1989 forefather, but 2005's Game Boy Micro - the final iteration of the Game Boy Advance - was markedly less successful. Nonetheless, this constant desire to tinker and enhance its handheld platforms has been a major part of the Kyoto giant's strategy for almost three decades and shows no signs of being abandoned any time soon; in fact, Nintendo's current pocket-sized console - the 3DS - has seen three revisions in as many years, and it has just received its fourth facelift.

The New Nintendo 3DS is - perhaps - the machine that 2012's 3DS XL should have been all along. It seeks to fix the many issues that have dogged the system since its inception, including shaky 3D viewing angles, the lack of a second analogue stick and sluggish performance when moving around the user interface. The good news is that it is successful in each respect and even adds some additional bonuses, making it without a doubt the definitive version of the 3DS hardware. This new system comes in two flavours; the standard New 3DS and the New 3DS XL (known as the LL in Japan). Both share a similar design, but the smaller model - presumably aimed at younger players, if the colourful and cartoon-like packaging is anything to go by - boasts interchangeable 'Kisekae' faceplates and eye-catching buttons that replicate the colour scheme seen on the iconic Super Famicom/SNES controller. Aside from the obvious differences in overall dimensions, screen size and battery capacity, the internal tech is identical across both units.

With Nintendo's New 3DS coming out this Friday there's been some concern over how one can transfer their data from their current 3DS (or 2DS) to the enhanced hardware. Well now Nintendo has released a tutorial video detailing the process of doing this through a computer in just 15 simple steps.

In all the hundreds of hours I've spent on the series, there's a single frame of animation which defines Monster Hunter for me. It's an inconsequential little pose, a brief celebration: arms held aloft and chest puffed out with pride. You can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure your hunter is also wearing a massive, turd-eating grin.

It's not a grand victory pose, it's the mark of a tiny achievement: just what happens every time you drink a potion, or an energy drink, or one of the little mugs of virtual cocoa that stop you freezing to death in icebound regions. Sip sip sip. Tadaaa! It's cute and quirky and completely unnecessary. It's also incredibly annoying, because whilst your avatar smugs it up for managing to have a drink some treacherous bastard inevitably lumbers up behind you and clatters you in the soft parts.

When Nintendo decided to tackle time-travel in its 1998 masterpiece, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the approach it took was mythic, built on moral fulfilment. The boy will venture through time to become a man, it foretold. He will travel to the future to undo the wrongs of the past, and travel to the past to prevent the wrongs of the future. He will face evil and thwart it. He will master his destiny and the world around him.

Two years later there was a sequel, Majora's Mask - now available in this splendid remake for 3DS - and it returned to the time-travel theme. It was set just after Ocarina of Time, with the same Link returned to childhood and continuing his adventures in a strange new land. It was built on the same engine and used much of the same artwork and designs. And yet, at heart, it could not have been a more different game.

But Shadow of Mordor was the real star of the night, scooping eight of the nine awards it was nominated for. Monolith's game finished as one our Games of 2014, writer Simon Parkin praising the happy accidents and unpredictability the unique nemesis system brought.

Woah Dave! is an unmissably strange arcade game that's currently available on just about everything. It's pretty easy to get into, but it has a weird twist to the hi-score formula that I've genuinely never seen in a game before. So I asked the developers how it came about.

Stick with the Code Name: STEAM demo that's currently available on the 3DS eStore. It's a slow burner, which is to say that this is a Valkyria Chronicles-style squad-controlling game, and you'll have to play for the best part of an hour before you have much of a squad to control. The early minutes belabour the simple business of explaining turn-based movement and blowing enemies to pieces, and the whole first mission leaves you with just two team members to think about. Don't worry: a full team is coming. The lion is coming.

The lion in question is the famous one - the one out of the Wizard of Oz who felt prematurely defeated by everything life entailed. Luckily, we meet him in Code Name: STEAM after he's had a change of outlook. He's feeling pretty good about things these days. I love this guy: his main attack is called the Lion Launcher, and whoever named it really wasn't screwing around. Study the battlefield, check your corners (whatever that means) and then decide which of your foes you'd like your lion to squish. With a muffled thrump you can send him spinning through the air, sailing across the map and dealing damage to whichever unfortunate soul gets his heavy boots through the face. That's lion logic. I'm trademarking that. (I'm not.)

There's been a lot of chat about Code Name: STEAM's vivid and angular Silver Age artwork, most of it negative. At worst, I think it's wonderfully ugly. I love its luridness, its barely-contained sense of energy. Most of all, though, I love the way it primes you for the zany treats that lie ahead in this unusual game. This, the art style whispers, is the kind of game where a lion might land on you out of the blue. Or where Abraham Lincoln could appear, all of a sudden, wearing a stars-and-stripes trenchcoat and announcing that rumours of his death have been greatly exaggerated. He's on a Steampunk zeppelin when he says this, naturally. A single, brisk "no time to explain" later, and he's off to assist the Queen of England at Buckingham Palace. Aliens are invading. No time to explain.

UPDATE: There will be "limited" redundancies at Sega of Europe, the company has told Eurogamer.

"We are under consultation with a limited number of staff in the European publishing business and will be able to confirm decisions regarding any potential redundancies in the coming weeks," a spokesperson said.

UPDATE 27/01/2015 6.49pm: Majora's Mask's third boss isn't the only thing that's changed about Zora Link in this upcoming 3DS remake. The swimming controls for the amphibian hero have been radically altered as well, for better or worse.

GameXplain has demonstrated the following change in its latest video. You see, in the original N64 game, Zora Link could dash indefinitely while swimming, allowing him to blaze through the sea lickety-split. It was great for large areas like the Great Bay, but not so great for navigating tighter underwater corridors, like the ones found in Great Bay Temple.

The remake slows down Link's dash so he's easier to maneuver around tight corners. Boosting is still an option, but it requires using a magic-consuming shield. Overall, Zora Link appears more focused and dangerous in exchange for zipping about like a dolphin to your heart's content.

Only in politics is the post of second-in-command considered a punchline. Here, unlike in sport or war, Vice President (or, indeed, Deputy Prime Minister) is the ultimate embodiment of the near miss - evidence of a grasp for power that fell just a little short, which, it turns out, is the precise distance necessary for tragi-comedy. The Veep is presented in both fiction and media as the arch-loser, a person whose ludicrous ambition outstripped their achievement, making them the perfect candidate for our scorn (and, perhaps, the perfect distraction from our own personal fears and failures).

If exaggeration leads to comedy, then Citizens of Earth goes all in: you're cast as vice president of the world. This is failure on the grandest of all scales then, a joke that's made all the better by the fact that you still live with your mother and brother and, for much of the game, simply wander the streets of your hometown and its surrounding area carrying out errands for the locals. The comedy comes from the juxtaposition of premise and reality. At the beginning of the game you wake in your childhood bed (a Japanese RPG cliché familiar to every Chrono Trigger veteran) as the newly elected second-in-global-command. The game's first boss? A creature lurking in the basement of the local coffee shop, Moonbucks, who has stolen the coffee beans and must be defeated in order to ensure that the young barista can keep her job.

The game's developer, Eden Industries - a young Canadian studio whose team includes artists and designers who worked on Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Mario Strikers Charged and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon - understands the appeal of the mundane when set against a world-saving context. Perhaps it's a lesson learned from those days spent with Nintendo. After all, Nintendo's Earthbound remains one of the most powerful and best-loved RPGs, and much of its enduring power derives from the way in which it explored the mystery and menace of American suburbs. In the same way, Citizens of Earth celebrates the rhythm and texture of small town life. You bicker with the newly defeated opposition leader. You chase after wanted criminals for the local police. You help a local journalist take pictures of a car that's fallen into a lake for a story she's working on. You inspire the town mascot to rediscover his school spirit.

In her infinite wisdom, Cher once sang, "If I could turn back time, if I could find a way." Really makes you think. Mind you, the cruel and inexorable march of time is good for some things, like bringing us this bunch of video game remakes that, in one way or another, managed to surpass their progenitors. Who would have guessed back in 1998 that the one thing missing from Half Life was Paul and Barry Chuckle? Technically that's two things, but you get my meaning.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1732048Wed, 21 Jan 2015 12:00:00 +0000Club Nintendo to close later this year

Nintendo has announced plans to close its Club Nintendo scheme in the coming months. The rewards system, formerly known as Nintendo VIP 24:7, began life in 2002 but will be phased out in three stages from April 1st this year.

As of that date, points registration cards will no longer be included with retail products. From April 20th, you'll no longer be able to register digital titles downloaded from the eShop. The programme formally closes for good on September 30th, at which point you'll no longer be able to sign up to the service, log in to your account, admire your Stars, or exchange them for any goods.

Nintendo has plans to introduce a replacement programme, but details are scarce. All we do know is that those who sign up to the new scheme will be able to download Flipnote Studio 3D to their 3DS for free.

Yu Suzuki made great games during Sega's 80s heyday, though you could argue that the cabinets were even better. From the otherworldly beauty of a Space Harrier to the chunky desirability of an Out Run, they're deliciously physical manifestations of these classics: these are games you can touch.

After Burner's no different, its various cabinets all sprayed with that particularly 80s brand of testosterone, watered down with a little boyish charm. It's a vital aspect of Sega's arcade output that's often been so hard to emulate. Playing them through the dumb window of a PC or many other ports does scant justice to the wonder of the real thing.

That's until M2's recent revivals which, after an amazing run back in 2013 that took in Galaxy Force 2, Space Harrier and Super Hang On, returns with a restoration of After Burner 2 that hit the 3DS' eShop late last week. It's quite possibly the Japanese developer's best work yet.

Spelling matters. Take, by way of a convenient example, the word "woah". A slang term, popularised by the great sage Keanu Reeves, it is used to express surprise, delight and excitement. However, shuffle those same letters around a little and you get "whoa", which is horse language for "stop".

Spelling matters. As the title suggests, Woah Dave is a game very much designed around the Keanu-approved version of the word. This is a game that surprises, delights and excites. Woah indeed. In contrast, should you attempt to play according to the second equine-skewed spelling, you will suffer badly. This is not a game where stopping is recommended. This is a game where to stop means pretty much instant death.

Woah Dave is a single screen confection which reaches back to the very dawn of arcade gaming for its inspiration. Playing as Dave Lonut, a short and square little fellow who looks not unlike a minimalist pixel art version of Sesame Street's Bert, you must hop from platform to platform while eggs drop from the sky. After a short delay these eggs hatch into monsters, and every time a monster hits the lava at the bottom of the screen, it evolves into a new enemy type.

Gaming analyst group NPD has revealed the top 10 highest selling games in the US retail market.

Unsurprisingly, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare took first place. What's more suprising is that last year's lackluster Call of Duty: Ghosts still managed to scratch this year's top 10, if only at the number 10 position.

It also may surprise a few folks that Destiny and Grant Theft Auto 5 were only in third and fourth place respectively, as Madden NFL 15 took the honour of runner-up to Call of Duty's throne.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1731223Fri, 16 Jan 2015 02:17:00 +0000Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is the series at its approachable best

Is there any game out there with more character than Monster Hunter? Capcom's series has never really enjoyed the same success over here as it has in Japan, which is a shame. It saddens me to think of all those who've missed out on all the little flourishes that make Monster Hunter so charming; the jolly mewls of your Felyne as it fights by your side, the threatening bounce of a Great Jaggi as it sizes up its prey or just the way you flop, triumphantly, on to the bed in your homestead after a good day's hunting. And, of course, the mighty, majestic and all-conquering prance.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate stands a better chance of earning an audience in the west than any entry before it, and it deserves to: this is, almost certainly, the best in the series to date. There's enough new, and enough nuance, to suck veterans in for another 100 hours or so: new systems, new weapons and a general streamlining that removes so many of the obstacles the series has previously put in players' way.

If you want to know more about new weapons such as the Charge Axe or the Insect Glaive - a curious, complex mix of melee and ranged combat that, I'm told, is absolutely devastating in the right hands - you'll have to wait for our review early next month when someone a little better versed in the world of Monster Hunter will be able to tell you how it all stacks up. In the meantime I'm here, in my slightly tatty Jaggi Faulds, to tell you what it's like for a relative newcomer.